The royal family has just entered the session chamber. It will find there not an asylum, but the vestibule of the prison and the scaffold. The man who had taken the Dauphin from the Queen's arms at the door of the Assembly set him down on the secretary's desk with an air of triumph, and the young Prince was greeted with applause. Marie Antoinette advanced with dignity. According to Vaublanc's expression, she would not have had a different bearing or a more august serenity on a day of royal pomp. Louis XVI. took a place near the president. The Queen, her daughter, Madame Elisabeth, and Madame de Tourzel sat down on the ministerial benches. As soon as the Dauphin was left to himself, he sprang towards his mother. A voice cried: "Take him to the King! The Austrian woman is unworthy of the people's confidence." An usher attempted to obey this injunction. However, the child began to cry, people were affected, and he was allowed to remain with the Queen. At this moment some armed noblemen made their appearance at the extremity of the hall. "Youcompromise the King's safety!" exclaimed some one, and the nobles retired.
Order was restored. Louis XVI. began to speak. "I came here," said he, "to prevent a great crime, and I think that I could be nowhere more secure than amidst the representatives of the nation." Alas! the crime will not be prevented, but only adjourned. Vergniaud occupied the president's chair. "Sire," he replied, "you may count on the firmness of the National Assembly. It knows its duties; its members have sworn to die in defending the rights of the people and the constituted authorities."
So they still called Louis XVI. Sire; presently they will call him nothing but Louis Capet. They allow him to take an armchair near the president; but in a few minutes they will find this place too good for him. And it is the voice of this very Vergniaud who, a few hours from now, will pronounce his deposition, and five months later his sentence of death.
Hardly had the unhappy King sat down when Chabot, the unfrocked Capuchin, claimed that a clause of the Constitution forbade the Assembly to deliberate in presence of the sovereign. Under this pretext his place was changed, and Louis XVI. with all his family was shut up in the reporters' gallery, sometimes called the box of the Logograph. This miserable hole, about six feet high by twelve wide, was on a level with the last ranks of the Assembly, behind the president's chair and the seats of thesecretaries. It was ordinarily set apart for the editors, or rather for the stenographers of a great newspaper which reported the proceedings, and which was called theJournal logographique, or theLogotachygraphe, usually abbreviated into theLogographe. Louis XVI. seated himself in the front of the box, Marie Antoinette half-concealed herself in a corner, where she sought a little shelter against so many humiliations. Her children and their governess took places on a bench with Madame Elisabeth and the Princess de Lamballe. Several noblemen, the latest courtiers of misfortune, stood up behind them.
Roederer, who was at the bar, then made a report in the name of the municipal department, in which he explained all that had taken place. He declared that he had said to the soldiers and National Guard detailed for the defence of the Tuileries: "We do not ask you to shed the blood of your brethren nor to attack your fellow-citizens; your cannons are there for your defence, not for an attack; but I require this defence in the name of the law, in the name of the Constitution. The law authorizes you, when violence is used against you, to repress it vigorously.... Once more, you are not to be assailants, but to act on the defensive only."
Roederer added that the cannoneers, instead of complying with his urgent exhortations, gave no response save that of unloading their pieces before him. After having explained how greatly thedefence was disorganized, he thus ended his report: "We felt ourselves no longer in a position to protect the charge confided to us; this charge was the King; the King is a man; this man is a father. The children ask us to assure the existence of the father; the law asks us to assure the existence of the King of France; humanity asks of us the existence of the man. No longer able to defend this charge, no other idea presented itself than that of entreating the King to come with his family to the National Assembly.... We have nothing to add to what I have just said, except that, our force being paralyzed, and no longer in existence, we can have none but that which it shall please the National Assembly to communicate. We are ready to die in the execution of the orders it may give us. We ask, while awaiting them, to remain near it, being useless everywhere else." The Assembly, not then suspecting that it would so soon depose Louis XVI., applauded without contradiction from the galleries. The president said to Roederer: "The Assembly has listened to your account with the greatest interest; it invites you to be present at the session."
The advice given by Roederer to the King has been greatly blamed. The event has seriously influenced the judgment since passed upon it. If Louis XVI. had received the support he had a right to count on from the representatives, things would have appeared in quite another light. Count de Vaublanc, in his Memoirs, has rendered full justiceto the loyal intentions of the municipal attorney. "The advice he gave has been accounted a crime," says M. de Vaublanc; "I think it is an unjust reproach. Until then he had done all that lay in his power to contribute to the defence of the palace. He must have seen clearly that as the King would not defend himself, he could no longer be defended. If the rebels had been attacked, neither M. Roederer nor any one else would have proposed going to the Assembly; but since they were on the defensive, and without any recognized leader, the magistrate might doubtless have been struck with a single thought: The King and his family are about to be massacred. The King put an end to all irresolution in saying these words: 'There is nothing more to do here.'"
At first, Louis XVI. seemed not to repent of the step he had been obliged to take. Even in that wretched hole, the Logograph box, his face at first was calm and even confident. As the shouting had increased outside, Vergniaud ordered the removal of the iron grating separating this box from the hall, so that in case the populace made an irruption into the lobbies, the King could take refuge in the midst of the deputies. In default of workmen and tools, the deputies nearest at hand, the Duke de Choiseul, Prince de Poix, and the ministers, undertook to tear away the grating, and Louis XVI. himself, accustomed to the rough work of a locksmith, joined his efforts to theirs. The fastenings having been broken in this manner, the unfortunate sovereign seemed notto doubt the sentiments of the National Assembly. He pointed out the most remarkable deputies to the Dauphin, chatted with several among them, and looked on at the session like a mere spectator in a box at the theatre.
The royal family had been nearly two hours at the Assembly when all of a sudden a frightful discharge of musketry and artillery was heard. The deputies of the left grew pale with fear and anger, thinking themselves betrayed. Casting glances of uneasiness and wrath at the feeble monarch, they accused him of having ordered a massacre, and said that all was lost. An officer of the National Guard rushed in, crying: "We are pursued, we are overpowered!" The galleries, affrighted, imagined that the Swiss would arrive at any moment. Excitement was at its height. Sinister, imposing, dreadful moment! Solemn hour, when the monarchy, amidst a frightful tempest, was like a venerable oak which lightning has just stricken; when terror, wrath, and pity disputed the possession of men's souls, and when the King, already captive, was present like Charles V. at his own funeral. Marie Antoinette had started. At the sound of the cannon her cheeks kindled and her eyes blazed. A vague hope animated her. Perhaps, she said within herself, the monarchy is at last to be avenged; perhaps the Swiss are about to give the insurrection a lesson it will remember; perhaps Louis XVI. will re-enter in triumph the palace of his forefathers. The daughter of Cæsars prayed God in silence, and supplicatedHim to grant victory to the defenders of the throne.
Chimeras! vain hopes! Louis XVI. has no longer but one idea: to cast off all responsibility for events. He mustered up, so to say, the little authority he had yet remaining, to write hastily, in pencil, the last order he was to sign: the order to stop firing. He flattered himself that the prohibition to shoot would justify him completely in the sight of the National Assembly, and induce them to treat him with more consideration. But he asked himself anxiously who would be bold enough to carry his order as far as the palace. Would not so perilous a mission intimidate even the most heroic? M. d'Hervilly, who was at this moment in the box of the Logograph, offered himself. As the King and Queen at first refused his offer, and pointed out all the dangers of such an errand: "I beg Their Majesties," cried he, "not to think of my danger; my duty is to brave everything in their service; my place is in the midst of the firing, and if I were afraid of it I should be unworthy of my uniform." These words determined Louis XVI. to give M. d'Hervilly the order signed by his own hand; the valiant nobleman, bearing this order which was to have such disastrous consequences for the defenders of the palace, went hastily out of the Assembly hall and made his way to the Tuileries through a rain of balls and canister.
What had taken place at the Tuileries after the departure of the royal family for the Assembly? At the very moment when they abandoned this palace which they were never to see again, the Marseillais, the vanguard of the insurrection, were pounding at the gate of the principal courtyard, furious because it was not opened. A few minutes later, the column of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, after passing through the rue Saint-Honoré, debouched on the Carrousel. It was under command of the Pole, Lazouski, and Westermann, who directed it toward the gate of the Royal Court. As the Marseillais had not yet succeeded in forcing this, Westermann had it broken open. The cannoneers, whose business it was to defend the palace, at once declared on the side of the riot and turned their pieces against the Tuileries. With the exception of the domestics there were now in the palace only the seven hundred and fifty Swiss, about a hundred National Guards, and a few nobles. The sole instructions the Swiss received came from old Marshal de Mailly: "Do not let yourselves be taken." Louis XVI. had said absolutely nothing on goingaway, and his departure discouraged his most faithful adherents. Add to this that the Swiss had not enough cartridges. What was to be the fate of this fine regiment, thiscorps d'élite, which everywhere and always had set the example of discipline and military honor; which ever since the Revolution began had haughtily repulsed every attempt to tamper with it; and whose red uniforms alone struck terror into the populace? These brave soldiers guarded respectfully the traditions of their ancestors who, at the famous retreat of Meaux, had saved Charles IX. "But for my good friends the Swiss," said that prince, "my life and liberty would have been in a bad way." What the Swiss of the sixteenth century had done for one King of France, the Swiss of the eighteenth century would have done for his successor. They would have saved Louis XVI. if he would have let himself be saved.
A major-general who had remained at the Tuileries, judging that it was impossible to defend the courts with so few soldiers, cried: "Gentlemen, retire to the palace!" "They had to leave six cannon in the power of the enemy and to abandon the courts. It should have been foreseen that it would be necessary to retake these under penalty of being burned in the palace; the common soldiers said so loudly. Meanwhile they obeyed, and were disposed as well as time and the localities permitted. The stairs and windows were lined with soldiers." (Account of Colonel Pfyffer d'Altishoffen, published at Lucerne in 1819.)
One post occupied the chapel, and another the vestibule and grand staircase. There were Swiss also at the windows looking into the courts. "Down with the Swiss!" cried the Marseillais. "Down! down! Surrender!" However, the struggle had not yet begun. Nearly fifteen minutes elapsed between the invasion of the Royal Court and the first shot. The Marseillais brandished their pikes and guns, but they were not confident, for at first they dared not cross the court more than half-way. The Swiss and National Guards who were at the windows made gestures to induce the populace to quiet down and go away. The throng of insurgents grew greater every minute. They had just got their cannon into battery against the Tuileries. What the Swiss specially intended was to defend the grand staircase, so as to prevent the apartments on the first floor from being invaded. This staircase, afterwards destroyed, was in the middle of the vestibule of the Horloge Pavilion. The chapel, whose site was afterwards changed, was on the level of the first landing; and from this landing, two symmetrical flights, at right angles with the first, led to the Hall of the Hundred Swiss (the future Hall of the Marshals). Westermann, bolder than the other insurgents, had advanced as far as the vestibule with several Marseillais. He began to parley with the soldiers, trying to set them against their officers and induce them to lay down their arms. Sergeant Blazer answered Westermann: "We are Swiss, and the Swiss only lay down their weapons with their lives."
The officers caused a barricade of pieces of wood to be raised on the first landing at the head of the stairs, to prevent new deputations from coming to demoralize their men. The Marseillais attempted to take it by main force. Some of them were armed with halberds terminating in hooks. These they thrust below the barricade, trying to catch the men defending it. They seized an adjutant in this way and disarmed him. At the foot of the stairs "they seized the first Swiss sentry and afterwards five others. They laid hold of them with hooked pikes which they thrust into their coats and drew them forwards, disarming them at once of their sabres, guns, and cartridge-boxes, amidst shouts of laughter. Encouraged by the success of this forlorn hope, the whole crowd pressed towards the foot of the stairs and there massacred the five Swiss already taken and disarmed." (M. Peltier's Relation.) Then a pistol-shot was heard. From which side did it come? Was it the Marseillais who provoked the combat? Was it the Swiss who sought to avenge their comrades, the sentries? Whoever it was, this pistol-shot was the signal for the fight, which began about half-past ten in the morning.
At first the Swiss had the advantage. Every shot they fired from the windows told. Among the people crowding the courtyards were many who had not come to fight, but through mere curiosity. Pale with fright, they fled toward the Carrousel through the gate of the Royal Court, which was strewn in aninstant with guns, pikes, and cartridge-boxes. Some of the insurgents fell flat on their faces and counterfeited death, rising occasionally and gliding along the walls to gain the sentry-boxes of the mounted sentinels as best they could. Even the majority of the cannoneers deserted their pieces and ran like the rest. The courts were cleared in an instant. Two Swiss officers, MM. de Durler and de Pfyffer, instantly made a sortie at the head of one hundred and twenty soldiers, took four cannon, and found themselves once more masters of the door of the Royal Court. A detachment of sixty soldiers formed themselves into a hollow square before this door and kept up a rolling fire on the rioters remaining on the Carrousel until the place was completely swept. At the same time, on the side of the garden, another detachment of Swiss, under Count de Salis, seized three cannon and brought them to the palace gate. Napoleon, who witnessed the combat from a distance, says: "The Swiss handled their artillery with vigor; in ten minutes the Marseillais were chased as far as the rue de l'Echelle, and never came back until the Swiss were withdrawn by the King's order."
It was now, in fact, that M. d'Hervilly arrived, hatless and unarmed, through the fusillade of grape. They wanted to show him the dispositions they had just made on the garden side. "There is no question of that," said he; "you must go to the Assembly; it is the King's order." The unfortunate soldiers flattered themselves that they might stillbe of use. "Yes, brave Swiss," cried Baron de Viomesnil, "go and find the King. Your ancestors did so more than once." In spite of their chagrin at abandoning the field of which they they had just become masters, they obeyed. Their only thought was to repair to that Assembly where a last humiliation awaited them. The officers had the drums beat the call to arms, and, in spite of the rain of balls from every side, they succeeded in marshalling the soldiers as if for a dress parade in front of the palace, opposite the garden. The signal for departure was given. An unforeseen peril was reserved for these heroes. The battalions of the National Guard, stationed at the door of the Pont Royal, at that of the Manège court, and the beginning of the terrace of the Feuillants, had stood still, with their weapons grounded, since the affray began. But hardly had the Swiss entered the grand alley than these battalions, neutral until now, detailed a number of individuals who hid behind the trees, and fired, with their muzzles almost touching the troops. On reaching the middle of the alley, the Swiss, who hardly deigned to return this fire, divided into two columns. The first, turning to the right under the trees, went towards the staircase leading to the Assembly from the terrace of the Feuillants. The second, which followed at a short distance and acted as a rearguard, went on as far as the Place Louis XV., where it found the mounted gendarmes. If this body of cavalry had done its duty, it would have united with theSwiss. But, far from that, it declared for the insurrection, and sabred them. It is said that the officers and soldiers killed in this retreat across the garden were interred at the foot of the famous chestnut whose exceptional forwardness has earned the surname of the tree of March 20. Thus the Bonapartist tree of popular tradition owes its astonishing strength of vegetation solely to the human compost furnished by the corpses of the last defenders of royalty.
The first column, that which was on its way to the Assembly, presented itself resolutely in front of the terrace of the Feuillants, which was full of people. These took flight, and the Swiss entered the corridors of the Assembly. Carried away by his zeal, one of their officers, Baron de Salis, entered the hall with his naked sword in his hand. The left uttered a cry of affright. A deputy went out to order the commander, Baron de Durler, to make his troop lay down their arms. M. de Durler, having refused, he was conducted to the King. "Sire," said he, with sorrowful indignation, "they want me to lay down arms." Louis XVI. responded: "Put them in the hands of the National Guard; I am not willing that brave men like you should perish." To surrender arms! Did Louis XVI. fully comprehend that for soldiers like these such an outrage was a hundred times worse than death? The King's words were like a thunderbolt to them. They wept with rage. "But," said they, "even if we have no more cartridges, we can still defend ourselves with ourbayonets!" Such devotion, such courage, such discipline, such heroism to end like this! And yet the unfortunate Swiss, though grieved to the heart, resigned themselves to the last sacrifice their master required from their fidelity, laid down their arms, and were imprisoned in the ancient church of the Feuillants, to the number of about two hundred and fifty. It was all that remained of this magnificent regiment. The others had been killed in the garden or had their throats cut in the palace, and the greater part of the survivors were to be assassinated in the massacres of September.
"Thus ended the French King's regiment of Swiss Guards, like one of those sturdy oaks whose prolonged existence has affronted so many storms, and which nothing but an earthquake can uproot. It fell the very day on which the ancient French monarchy also fell. It counted more than a century and a half of faithful services rendered to France. To destroy this worthy corps a combination of unfortunate events had been required; it had been necessary to deprive the Swiss of their artillery, their ammunition, their staff, and the presence of the King; to enfeeble them five days before the combat by sending away a detachment of three hundred men; to forbid the two hundred men who accompanied the King to the Assembly to fire a shot; to render useless the wise dispositions of MM. de Maillardoz and de Bachmann by an ill-advised order at the moment of the attack; and to have M. d'Hervilly come atthe moment of victory to divide and enfeeble the defence." (Relation of Colonel Pfyffer d'Altishoffen.)
The Swiss republic has honored the memory of these sons who died for a king. At the entrance of Lucerne, in the side of a rock, a grotto has been hollowed out, in which may be seen a colossal stone lion, the work of Thorwaldsen, the famous Danish sculptor. This lion, struck by a lance, and lying down to die, holds tight within his claws the royal escutcheon upon a shield adorned with fleurs-de-lis. Underneath the lion are engraved the names of the Swiss officers and soldiers who died between August 10 and September 2, 1792. Above it may be read this inscription cut in the rock:—
Louis XVI. had to repent his weakness bitterly. The wretched monarch had at last reached the bottom of the abyss where the slippery descent of concessions ends, and for having been willing to spare the blood of a few criminals, he was to see that of his most loyal and faithful adherents shed in torrents. It is said that Napoleon, who witnessed the combat from a distance, cried several times, in speaking of Louis XVI.: "What, then, wretched man! Have you no cannon to sweep out this rabble?" Behind the people of the 10th of August, the man of Brumaire already appeared as a conqueror.
Work away, then, insurgents! This unknown young man, this "straight-haired Corsican," hidden in the crowd, will be the master of you all! He will crush the Revolution, he will made himself all-powerful in that palace of the Tuileries where the riot is lording it at this moment! And after him, the brother of the King whom you insult to-day and will kill to-morrow, the Count de Provence, thatémigréwho is the object of your hatred, will triumphantly enter the palace of his forefathers. And each of them in his turn, the Corsican gentleman and the brother of Louis XVI., will be received with the same transports in that fatal palace which is now red with the blood of the Swiss! How surprised these people would be if they could foresee what the future has in store for them! Among these frenzied demagogues, these ultra-revolutionists, these dishevelled Marseillais with lips blackened by powder, and jackets all blood, how many will be the fanatical admirers and soldiers of a Cæsar!
The results of the combat were, at the Assembly, the decree of suspension, or, rather, the decree of deposition; at the Tuileries, devastation, massacre, and conflagration. From the moment when he ordered his last defenders to lay down their arms, Louis XVI. was but the phantom of a king.
While the fight was going on, Robespierre had remained in hiding; Marat had not quitted the bottom of a cellar. Even Danton, the man of "audacity," did not show himself until after the last shot had been fired. But now that fate had declared for the Revolution, those who were trembling and hesitating a moment since, were those who talked the loudest. Louis XVI., who had been dreaded a few minutes ago, was insulted and jeered at. The National Assembly, royalist in the morning, became the accomplice of the republicans during the day. It perceived, moreover, that the 10th of August was aimed at it not less than at the throne, and that its own downfall would be contemporaneous with that of royalty.
Huguenin, the president of the new Commune, came boldly to the bar, and said to the deputies:"The people is your sovereign as well as ours!" Another individual, likewise at the bar, exclaimed in a menacing tone: "For a long time the people has asked you to pronounce the deposition, and you have not even yet pronounced the suspension! Know that the Tuileries is on fire, and that we shall not extinguish it until the vengeance of the people has been satisfied!" Vergniaud, who in the morning had promised the King the support of the Assembly, no longer even attempted to stem the revolutionary tide. He came down from the president's chair, and went to a desk to write the decree which should give a legislative form to the will of the insurrection. In virtue of this decree, which Vergniaud read from the tribune, and which was unanimously adopted, the royal power was suspended and a National Convention convoked. In reality this was a veritable deposition, and yet the Assembly still hesitated to give the last shock which should uproot the royal tree that had sheltered beneath its branches so many faithful generations. It declared that in default of a civil list, a salary should be granted to the King during his suspension; that Louis XVI. and his family should have a palace, the Luxembourg, for a residence, and that he should be appointed governor of the Prince-royal.
Concerning this, Madame de Staël has remarked in herConsiderations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution française: "Ambition for power mingled with the enthusiasm of principles in the republicansof 1792, and several among them offered to maintain royalty if all the ministerial places were given to their friends.... The throne they attacked served to shelter them, and it was not until after they had triumphed that they found themselves exposed before the people." What the Girondins wanted was merely a change in the ministry; it was not a revolution. Vergniaud felt that he had been distanced. When he read the act of deposition, his voice was sad, his attitude dejected, and his action feeble. Did he foresee that the King and himself would die at the same place, on the same scaffold, and only nine months apart?
Louis XVI. listened to the invectives launched against him, and to the decree depriving him of royal power, without a change of color. At the very moment when the vote was taken, he bent towards Deputy Coustard, who sat beside the box of theLogographe, and said with the greatest tranquillity: "What you are doing there is not very constitutional." Impassive, and speaking of himself as of a king who had lived a thousand years before, he leaned his elbows on the front of the box, and looked on, like a disinterested spectator, at the lugubrious spectacle that was unrolled before him.
Marie Antoinette, on the contrary, was shuddering. So long as the combat lasted, a secret hope had thrilled her. But when she saw them bringing to the Assembly and laying on the table the jewel-cases, trinkets, and portfolios which the insurgents had justtaken from her bedroom at the Tuileries; when she heard the victorious cries of the rioters; when Vergniaud's voice sounded in her ears like a funeral knell—she could hardly contain her grief and indignation. For one instant she closed her eyes. But presently she haughtily raised her head.
The tide was rising, rising incessantly. Petitioners demanded sometimes the deposition, and sometimes the death, of the King. This dialogue was overheard between the painter David and Merlin de Thionville, who were talking together about Louis XVI.: "Would you believe it? Just now he asked me, as I was passing his box, if I would soon have his portrait finished."—"Bah! and what did you say?"—"That I would never paint the portrait of a tyrant again until I should have his head in my hat."—"Admirable! I don't know a more sublime answer, even in antiquity."
The demands of the Revolution grew greater from minute to minute. In the decree of deposition which had been voted on Vergniaud's proposition, it was stipulated that the ministers should continue to exercise their functions. A few instants later, Brissot caused it to be decreed that they had lost the nation's confidence. A new ministry was nominated during the session. The three ministers dismissed before June 20—Roland, Clavière, and Servan—were reinstalled by acclamation in the ministries of the Interior, of Finances, and of War. The other ministers were chosen by ballot: Danton was nominated to thatof Justice by 282 votes, Monge to the Marine by 150, and Lebrun-Tondu to Foreign Affairs by 100. This ballot established the fact that out of the 749 members composing the Assembly, but 284 were present. Two days before, 680 had voted on the question concerning Lafayette, and now, at the moment of the final crisis, not more than 284 could be found! All the others had disappeared, through fear or through disgust. The Revolution was accomplished by an Assembly thus reduced, and a Commune whose members had appointed themselves. Marie Antoinette, in her pride as Queen, was unable to conceive that there could be anything serious in such a government. When Lebrun-Tondu's appointment was announced, she leaned towards Bigot de Sainte-Croix, and said in his ear: "I hope you will none the less believe yourself Minister of Foreign Affairs."
The unfortunate royal family were still prisoners in the narrow box of theLogographe. The heat there was horrible: the sun scorched the white walls of this furnace where the captives listened, as in a place of torture, to the most ignoble insults and the most sanguinary threats.
At seven o'clock in the evening, Count François de la Rochefoucauld succeeded in approaching the box of theLogographe. He thus describes its aspect at this hour: "I approached the King's box; it was unguarded except by some wretches who were drunk and paid no attention to me, so that I half-opened the door. I saw the King with a fatigued anddowncast face; he was sitting on the front of the box, coldly observing through his lorgnette the scoundrels who were talking, sometimes one after another, and sometimes all together. Near him was the Queen, whose tears and perspiration had completely drenched her fichu and her handkerchief. The Dauphin was asleep on her lap, and resting partly also on that of Madame de Tourzel. Mesdames Elisabeth, de Lamballe, and Madame the King's daughter were at the back of the box. I offered my services to the King, who replied that it would be too dangerous to try to see him again, and added that he was going to the Luxembourg that evening. The Queen asked me for a handkerchief; I had none; mine had served to bind up the wounds of the Viscount de Maillé, whom I had rescued from some pikemen. I went out to look for a handkerchief, and borrowed one from the keeper of the refreshment-room; but as I was taking it to the Queen, the sentinels were relieved, and I found it impossible to approach the box."
We have just seen what occurred at the Assembly after the close of the combat. Cast now a glance at the Tuileries. What horrible scenes, what cries of grief, how many wounded, dead, and dying, what streams of blood! What had become of those Swiss who, either in consequence of their wounds, or through some other motive, had been obliged to remain at the palace? Eighty of them had defended the grand staircase like heroes, against an immense crowd, and died after prodigies of valor. SeventeenSwiss who were posted in the chapel, and who had not fired a shot since the fight began, hoped to save their lives by laying down their arms. It was a mistake. They had their throats cut like the others. Two ushers of the King's chamber, MM. Pallas and de Marchais, sword in hand, and hats pulled down over their eyes, said: "We don't want to live any longer; this is our post; we ought to die here!" and they were killed at the door of their master's chamber.
M. Dieu died in the same way on the threshold of the Queen's bedroom. A certain number of nobles who had not followed the King to the Assembly succeeded in escaping the blows of the assassins. Passing through the suite of large apartments towards the Louvre Gallery, they rejoined there some soldiers detailed to guard an opening contrived in the flooring, so as to prevent the assailants from entering by that way. They crossed this opening on boards, and reached the extremity of the gallery unhindered; then, going down the staircase of Catharine de Medici, they managed to gain the streets near the Louvre. These may have been saved. But woe to all men, no matter what their conditions, who remained in the Tuileries! Domestic servants, ushers, laborers, every soul was put to death. They killed even the dying, even the surgeons who were caring for the wounded. It is Barbaroux himself who describes the murderers as "cowardly fugitives during the action, assassins after the victory, butchersof dead bodies which they stabbed with their swords so as to give themselves the honors of the combat. In the apartments, on roofs, and in cellars, they massacred the Swiss, armed or disarmed, the chevaliers, soldiers, and all who peopled the chateau.... Our devotion was of no avail," says Barbaroux again; "we were speaking to men who no longer recognized us."
And the women, what was their fate? When the firing began, the Queen's ladies and the Princesses descended to Marie Antoinette's apartments on the ground-floor. They closed the shutters, hoping to incur less danger, and lighted a candle so as not to be in total darkness. Then Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel exclaimed: "Let us light all the candles in the chandelier, the sconces, and the torches; if the brigands force open the door, the astonishment so many lights will cause them may delay the first blow and give us time to speak." The ladies set to work. When the invaders broke in, sabre in hand, the numberless lights, which were repeated also in the mirrors, made such a contrast with the daylight they had just left, that for a moment they remained stupefied. And yet, the Princess de Tarente, Madame de La Roche-Aymon, Mademoiselle de Tourzel, Madame de Ginestons, and all the other ladies were about to perish when a man with a long beard made his appearance, crying to the assassins in Pétion's name: "Spare the women; do not dishonor the nation."
Madame Campan had attempted to go up a stairway in pursuit of her sister. The murderers followed her. She already felt a terrible hand against her back, trying to seize her by her clothes, when some one cried from the foot of the stairs: "What are you doing up there?"—"Hey!" said the murderer, in a tone that did not soon leave the trembling woman's ears. The other voice replied: "We don't kill women." The Revolution goes fast; it will kill them next year. Madame Campan was on her knees. Her executioner let go his hold. "Get up, hussy," he said to her, "the nation spares you!" In going back she walked over corpses; she recognized that of the old Viscount de Broves. The Queen had sent word to him and to another old man as the last night began, that she desired them to go home. He had replied: "We have been only too obedient to the King's orders in all circumstances when it was necessary to expose our lives to save him; this time we will not obey, and will simply preserve the memory of the Queen's kindness."
What a sight the Tuileries presented! People walked on nothing but dead bodies. A comic actor drank a glass of blood, the blood of a Swiss; one might have thought himself at a feast of Atreus. The furniture was broken, the secretaries forced open, the mirrors smashed to pieces. Prudhomme, the journalist of theRévolutions de Paris, thinks that "Medicis-Antoinette has too long studied in themthe hypocritical look she wears in public." What a sinister carnival! Drunken women and prostitutes put on the Queen's dresses and sprawl on her bed. Through the cellar gratings one can see a thousand hands groping in the sand, and drawing forth bottles of wine. Everywhere people are laughing, drinking, killing. The royal wine runs in streams. Torrents of wine, torrents of blood. The apartments, the staircase, the vestibule, are crimson pools. Disfigured corpses, pictures thrust through with pikes, musicians' stands thrown on the altar, the organ dismounted, broken,—that is how the chapel looks. But to rob and murder is not enough: they will kindle a conflagration. It devours the stables of the mounted guards, all the buildings in the courts, the house of the governor of the palace: eighteen hundred yards of barracks, huts, and houses. Already the fire is gaining on the Pavilion of Marsan and the Pavilion of Flora. The flames are perceived at the Assembly. A deputy asks to have the firemen sent to fight this fire which threatens the whole quarter Saint-Honoré. Somebody remarks that this is the Commune's business. But the Commune, to use a phrase then in vogue, thinks it has something else to do besides preventing the destruction of the tyrant's palace. It turns a deaf ear. The messenger returns to the Assembly. It is remarked that the flames are doing terrible damage. The president decides to send orders to the firemen. But the firemen return, saying: "We can do nothing. Theyare firing on us. They want to throw us into the fire." What is to be done? The president bethinks himself of a "patriot" architect, Citizen Palloy, who generally makes his appearance whenever there are "patriotic" demolitions to be accomplished. It is he whom they send to the palace, and who succeeds in getting the flames extinguished. The Tuileries are not burned up this time. The work of the incendiaries of 1792 was only to be finished by the petroleurs of 1871.
Night was come. A great number of the Parisian population were groaning, but the revolutionists triumphed with joy. Curiosity to see the morning battle-field, urged the indolent, who had stayed at home all day, towards the quays, the Champs-Elysées, and the Tuileries. They looked at the trees under which the Swiss had fallen, at the windows of the apartments where the massacres had taken place, at the ravages made by the hardly extinguished fire. The buildings in the three courts: Court of the Princes, Court Royal, Court of the Swiss, had been completely consumed. Thenceforward these three courts formed only one, separated from the Carrousel by a board partition which remained until 1800, and was replaced by a grating finished on the very day when the First Consul came to install himself at the Tuileries. The inscription which was placed above the wooden partition: "On August 10 royalty was abolished; it will never rise again," disappeared even before the proclamation of the Empire.
Squads of laborers gathered up the dead bodies and threw them into tumbrels. At midnight an immense pile was erected on the Carrousel with timbers and furniture from the palace. There the corpses of the victims that had strewed the courts, the vestibule, and the apartments were heaped up, and set on fire.
The National Guard had disappeared; it figured with the King and the Assembly itself, among the vanquished of the day. Instead of its bayonets and uniforms one saw nothing in the stations and patrols that divided Paris but pikes and tatters. "Some one came to tell me," relates Madame de Staël, "that all of my friends who had been on guard outside the palace, had been seized and massacred. I went out at once to learn the news; the coachman who drove me was stopped at the bridge by men who silently made signs that they were murdering on the other side. After two hours of useless efforts to pass I learned that all those in whom I was interested were still living, but that most of them had been obliged to hide in order to escape the proscription with which they were threatened. When I went to see them in the evening, on foot, and in the mean houses where they had been able to find shelter, I found armed men lying before the doors, stupid with drink, and only half waking to utter execrable curses. Several women of the people were in the same state, and their vociferations were more odious still. Whenever a patrol intended to maintain order made its appearance,honest people fled out of its way; for what they called maintaining order was to contribute to the triumph of assassins and rid them of all hindrances."
At last the city was going to rest a while after so much emotion! It was three o'clock in the morning. The Assembly, which had been in session for twenty-four hours, adjourned. Only a few members remained in the hall to maintain the permanence proclaimed at the beginning of the crisis. The inspectors of the hall came for Louis XVI. and his family, to conduct them, not to the Luxembourg, but to the upper story of the convent of the Feuillants, above the corridor where the offices and committees of the Assembly had been established. It was there, in the cells of the monks, that the royal family were to pass the night. Then all was silent once more. Royalty was dying!
What a strange prison was this dilapidated old monastery, these little cells, not lived in for two years, with their flooring half-destroyed, and their narrow windows looking down into courts full of men drunken with wine and blood! By the light of candles stuck into gun-barrels the royal family entered this gloomy lodging. Trembling for her son, who was frightened, the Queen took him from M. Aubier's arms and whispered to him. The child grew calmer. "Mamma," said he, "has promised to let me sleep in her room because I was very good before all those wicked men." Four cells, all opening by similar small doors upon the same corridor, comprised the quarters of the royal family. What a night! The souvenirs of the previous day came back like dismal dreams. Their ears were still deafened with furious cries. They seemed to see the blood of the Swiss flowing like a torrent, the pyramids of corpses in red uniforms, the flames of the terrible conflagration sweeping the approaches to the Tuileries. Marie Antoinette seems under anhallucination; her emotions break her down. Is this woman, confided to the care of an unknown servant, in this deserted old convent, really she? Is this the Queen of France and Navarre? This the daughter of the great Empress Maria Theresa? What uncertainty rests over the fate of her most faithful servitors! What news will she yet learn? Who has fallen? Who has survived the carnage? The hours of the night wear on; Marie Antoinette has not been able to sleep a moment.
The Marquis de Tourzel and M. d'Aubier remained near the King's bedside. Before sleeping, he talked to them with the utmost calmness of all that had taken place. "People regret," said he, "that I did not have the rebels attacked before they could have forced the Assembly; but besides the fact that in accordance with the terms of the Constitution, the National Guards might have refused to be the aggressors, what would have been the result of this attack? The measures of the insurrection were too well taken for my party to have been victorious, even if I had not left the Tuileries. Do they forget that when the seditious Commune massacred M. Mandat, it rendered his projected defence of no avail?" While Louis XVI. was saying this, the men placed under the windows were shouting loudly for the Queen's head. "What has she done to them?" cried the unfortunate sovereign.
The next morning, August 11, several persons were authorized to enter the cells of the convent.Among them was one of the officers of the King's bedchamber, François Hue, who had incurred the greatest dangers on the previous day. Cards of admission were distributed by the inspector of the Assembly hall. A large guard was stationed at all the issues of the corridor. No one could pass without being stopped and questioned. After surmounting all obstacles, M. Hue reached the cell of Louis XVI. The King was still in bed, with his head covered by a coarse cloth. He looked tenderly at his faithful servant. M. Hue, who could scarcely speak for sobbing, apprised his unhappy master of the tragic death of several persons whom His Majesty was especially fond of, among others, the Chevalier d'Allonville, who had been under-governor to the first Dauphin, and several officers of the bedchamber: MM. Le Tellier, Pallas, and de Marchais. "I have, at least," said Louis XVI., "the consolation of seeing you saved from this massacre!"
All night long, Madame Elisabeth, the Princess de Lamballe, and Madame de Tourzel had prayed and wept in silence at the door of the chamber where Marie Antoinette watched beside her sleeping children. It was not until morning, after cruel insomnia, that the wretched Queen was at last able to close her eyes. And when, after a few minutes, she opened them again, what an awakening!
At eight o'clock in the morning Mademoiselle Pauline de Tourzel arrived at the Feuillants. "I cannot say enough," she writes in herSouvenirs de QuaranteAns, "about the goodness of the King and Queen; they asked me many questions about the persons concerning whom I could give them any tidings. Madame and the Dauphin received me with touching signs of affection; they embraced me, and Madame said: 'My dear Pauline, do not leave us any more!'" The courtiers of misfortune came one after another. Madame Campan and her sister, Madame Auguié, saw the Prince de Poix, M. d'Aubier, M. de Saint-Pardou, Madame Elisabeth's equerry, MM. de Goguelat, Hue, and de Chamilly in the first cell; in the second they found the King. They wanted to kiss his hand, but he prevented it, and embraced them without speaking. In the third cell they saw the Queen, waited on by an unknown woman. Marie Antoinette held out her arms. "Come!" she cried; "come, unhappy women! come and see one who is still more unhappy than you, since it is she who has been the cause of all your sorrow!" She added: "We are ruined. We have reached the place at last to which they have been leading us for three years by every possible outrage; we shall succumb in this horrible revolution, and many others will perish after us. Everybody has contributed to our ruin: the innovators like fools, others like the ambitious, in order to aid their own fortunes; for the most furious of the Jacobins wanted gold and places, and the crowd expected pillage. There is not a patriot in the whole infamous horde; the emigrants had their schemes and manoeuvres;the foreigners wanted to profit by the dissensions of France; everybody has had a part in our misfortunes." Here the Dauphin entered with his sister and Madame de Tourzel. "Poor children!" cried the Queen. "How cruel it is not to transmit to them so noble a heritage, and to say: All is over for us!" And as the little Dauphin, seeing his mother and those around her weeping, began to shed tears also: "My child," the Queen said, embracing him, "you see I have consolations too; the friends whom misfortune deprived me of were not worth as much as those it gave me." Then Marie Antoinette asked for news of the Princess de Tarente, Madame de la Roche-Aymon, and others whom she had left at the Tuileries. She compassionated the fate of the victims of the previous day.
Madame Campan expressed a desire to know what the foreign ambassadors had done in this catastrophe. The Queen replied that they had done nothing, but that the English ambassadress, Lady Sutherland, had just displayed some interest by sending linen for the Dauphin, who was in need of it.
What memories must not that little cell in the Feuillants convent have left in the souls of those who were privileged to present there the homage of their devotion to the Queen! "I think I still see," Madame Campan has said in her Memoirs, "I shall always see, that little cell, hung with green paper, that wretched couch from which the dethroned sovereign stretched out her arms to us, saying that ourwoes, of which she was the cause, aggravated her own. There, for the last time, I saw the tears flowing and heard the sobs of her whose birth and natural gifts, and above all the goodness of whose heart had destined her to be the ornament of all thrones and the happiness of all peoples."
During the 11th and 12th of August the tortures of the 10th were renewed for the royal family. They were obliged to occupy the odious box of theLogographeduring the sessions of the Assembly, and from there witness, as at a show, the slow and painful death-struggle of royalty. As she was on her way to this wretched hole, Marie Antoinette perceived in the garden some curious spectators on whose faces a certain compassion was depicted. She saluted them. Then a voice cried: "Don't put on so many airs with that graceful head; it is not worth while. You'll not have it much longer." From the box of theLogographethe royal family listened to the most offensive motions; to decrees according the Marseillais a payment of thirty sous a day, ordering all statues of kings to be overthrown, and petitions demanding the heads of all the Swiss who had escaped the massacre. At last the Assembly grew tired of the long humiliation of the august captives. On Monday, August 13, they were not present at the session, and during the day they were notified that in the evening they were to be incarcerated, not in the Luxembourg,—that palace being too good for them,—but in the tower of the Temple. When MarieAntoinette was informed of this decision, she turned toward Madame de Tourzel, and putting her hands over her eyes, said: "I always asked the Count d'Artois to have that villanous tower of the Temple torn down; it always filled me with horror!" Pétion told Louis XVI. that the Communal Council had decreed that none of the persons proposed for the service of the royal family should follow them to their new abode. By force of remonstrance the King finally obtained permission that the Princess de Lamballe, Madame de Tourzel and her daughter should be excepted from this interdiction, and also MM. Hue and de Chamilly, and Mesdames Thibaud, Basire, Navarre, and Saint-Brice. The departure for the Temple took place at five in the evening. The royal family went in a large carriage with Manuel and Pétion, who kept their hats on. The coachman and footmen, dressed in gray, served their masters for the last time. National Guards escorted the carriage on foot and with reversed arms. The passage through a hostile multitude occupied not less than two hours. The vehicle, which moved very slowly, stopped for several moments in the Place Vendôme. There Manuel pointed out the statue of Louis XIV., which had been thrown down from its pedestal. At first the descendant of the great King reddened with indignation, then, tranquillizing himself instantly, he calmly replied: "It is fortunate, Sir, that the rage of the people spends itself on inanimate objects." Manuel might have gone on to say thaton this very Place Vendôme "Queen Violet," one of the most furious vixens of the October Days, had just been crushed by the fall of this equestrian statue of Louis XIV. to which she was hanging in order to help bring it down. The statue of Henry IV. in the Place Royale, that of Louis XIII. in the Place des Victoires, and that of Louis XV. in the place that bears his name, had fallen at the same time.
The royal family arrived at the Temple at seven in the evening. The lanterns placed on the projecting portions of the walls and the battlements of the great tower made it resemble a catafalque surrounded by funeral lights. The Queen wore a shoe with a hole in it, through which her foot could be seen. "You would not believe," said she, smiling, "that a Queen of France was in need of shoes." The doors closed upon the captives, and a sanguinary crowd complained of the thickness of the walls separating them from their prey.